MSNBC — Breaking News, Top Stories, & Show ClipsThe Community Foundation
By Sandra Salmans
How a hundred-year-old idea is reshaping philanthropy around the world.
Carnegie and Rockefeller had recently established&and lavishly endowed&their eponymous foundations when Frederick Goff, president of the Cleveland Trust Company, had a different idea: a &community trust& to which the city&s philanthropists could all contribute. Interest on the money, it was declared, would fund &such charitable purposes as will best make for the mental, moral, and physical improvement of the inhabitants of Cleveland.&
Frederick-Goff
Thus, 100 years ago, was born the world&s first community foundation. (Bequests were, not coincidentally, deposited at the Cleveland Trust Company&setting a precedent for the charitable funds later established by financial services companies such as Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard.) The Cleveland Foundation was soon leaving its mark on the city, supporting the creation of the so-called &emerald necklace& of the city&s parks, shaking up the corrupt judicial system, spearheading public school reforms that included equal education opportunities for girls. And within five years, community foundations (CFs) had sprung up in Chicago, Boston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Buffalo, NY.
The growth of CFs since then has been immense, immeasurably greater than even the visionary Goff could have dreamed. Today there are an estimated 700 CFs in the US. According to CF Insights, a consultancy specializing in community foundations, assets at CFs in the U.S. totaled $66 billion in 2013, an increase of $8 billion over the previous year. The Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) led the way, at $4.7 billion, followed by the Tulsa Community Foundation, with $3.9 billion, and the New York Community Trust, with $2.4 billion. (SVCF&s assets, which ballooned with a $1 billion gift from Mark Zuckerberg in 2013, surged ahead again in 2014 with a $500 million stake in the camera maker GoPro from its founders.)
Mark Zuckerberg
In 2013, commemorating the 100 years since the first CF was established, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation created a chair on community foundations at Indiana University&s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. And this past October, to celebrate the centenary of the CF, the Council on Foundations gathered leading philanthropic organizations in Cleveland, where it all began.
What&s more, the rest of the world&including the developing world&is rapidly following America&s lead. According to the latest tally by WINGS (Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support), a global network of grantmaker support organizations, and the Community Fund Atlas, which is underwritten by the Cleveland Foundation, there are currently some 1,100 CFs outside the US, in more than 50 countries and on six continents. Having launched in the US and Canada in 1914, the CF crossed the Atlantic to Britain about 35 years ago, took root in Germany around the time of reunification, spread to Russia and the former Soviet states, and is currently establishing a foothold throughout the developing world. Between 2010 and 2014, eight new CFs were established in Asia-Pacific, four in sub-Saharan Africa, four in Latin America and two in the Middle East. As the Mott Foundation aptly declared in its 2012 annual report, CFs are &rooted locally, growing globally.&
Whether in the industrialized world or the emerging one, CFs are identical in one key respect: They are public charities that tap the wealth of their communities, with the goal of redistributing it locally. That mission has universal application, asserts Emmett Carson, who is the SVCF&s chief executive officer and is also the visiting holder of the new Mott chair on community foundations. &We should think of the community foundation concept like water,& he says. &The water is the same, but it takes on the shape of whatever community you pour it into.&
Emmett Carson
And the fact is that CFs differ markedly from one country to another&and, increasingly, even within a country. In the developed world, many CFs are taking on a more activist role than in the past, initiating projects and partnerships as well as donating to established programs. What&s more, many are traveling far beyond their borders, accepting funds from a wider audience and playing a role on the national and even international stage
Meanwhile, the CFs that are springing up in less developed areas&Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe&are digging deep into their communities to convince residents to trust the very concept of pooling and distributing funds. While endowments and professional leadership are the hallmarks of long-standing CFs in the US, money necessarily takes a back seat to other priorities among CFs in emerging countries, where there are only small pockets of wealth. &They have to prove they&re relevant to the community and need to establish trust where often there are low levels of trust,& notes Nick Deychakiwsky, program officer for the Mott Foundation&s civil society team. In fact, in many cases those CFs have received a jumpstart by foundations such as Mott, Ford, Open Society and Aga Khan, and also appeal to the diaspora for funds.
Nick Deychakiwsky
As Jenny Hodgson, director of the South Africa-based Global Fund for Community Foundations, observes, community philanthropy is as old as, well, communities themselves. &Every country and culture has its traditions of giving and mutual support between family, friends and neighbors,& she has written, pointing to the tradition of burial societies across Africa and hometown associations in Mexico.
However, the new generation of community philanthropy institutions&fueled by factors ranging from a growing concentration of wealth to the popularity of social media, according to WINGS executive director Helena Monteiro&take a more strategic approach to giving. &Most are about development rather than donor services, and they do a lot of capacity building,& Hodgson told Giving. &They&re building civil society, essentially.& As the Kenya Community Development Foundation, a CF established in 1997, asserts on its website, its goal is &the growth and sustainability of communities by their strong engagement in owning and driving their development efforts.& (Italics are KCDF&s.)
Helena Monteiro
A sampling of this new breed of CFs offers a glimpse of the variety of programs being undertaken:
In Egypt, the Community Foundation for South Sinai is working to support the Bedouin, who have long been marginalized. The CF is working on several fronts to raise the tribes out of poverty and pre projects have included teaching the women how to make useful wool products, and providing a camel to a boy who was his family&s breadwinner.
In Costa Rica, the Monteverde Community Fund, initially founded to invest tourism revenue in preserving the rain forests, has added a social portfolio. Among other projects, it is promoting a community Internet-based radio station, training local youth to create programming and encouraging them to engage in public discourse.
In Romania, multiple CFs have organized annual &swimathons& to raise their profiles, garner funds and spread the ethos of sharing. In Cluj, the country&s second most populous city, revenue went to support new programs for young people, including a robotics class in an elementary school and education for students with special needs.
On the West Bank, the Dalia Association, a Palestinian CF, gave women from nearby villages $6,000 to build a park. The women went on to secure additional donations, including the land, utility hookups, a basketball court, a playground and a library.
In Slovakia, the Banska Bystrica City Foundation&Eastern Europe&s oldest CF, initially launched as a World Health Organization project&has assembled a group of local donors that assist the city&s street children, provide support for the local Roma community, and encourage younger people to take an interest in philanthropy.
While all these CFs have struggled to raise money, elsewhere they have also encountered tight governmental controls or opposition. Even there, however, they are making headway. According to a recent report by CAF (Charities Aid Foundation) Russia, a support group for charitable and nonprofit groups, nearly two-thirds of the membership of CF governing boards comes from the auth even so, starting with one CF in 1998, Russia today has more than 45 community foundations. The situation is more problematic in China, where very few private organizations are permitted to do fundraising, grantmaking is relatively unknown and civil society is weak. Still, says Hodgson, &everybody is talking about community foundations in China. There&s lots of energy right now.&
That&s also an apt description of the situation in the US, where the biggest CFs are stepping up their game. Rather than limiting themselves to making grants to established programs, &community foundations are increasingly moving into the sphere of brokers for community solutions,& declares Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, who heads the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo in New York State. Dedecker&s group was the prime mover in launching Say Yes to Education, an initiative that has brought together school parents, union leaders, the business sector and other stakeholders to provide year-round support to students K-12, including college scholarships.
Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker
Arguably the most striking example of the supercharged CF is the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The result of a merger of two leading CFs in 2006, SVCF is not only the largest single grantmaker to Bay Area nonprofits, it&s the fifteenth largest international grantmaker in the United States, according to Carson. Furthermore, while SVCF draws much of its wealth from the affluent high-tech community, it also has donors who neither live in the Bay Area nor give to it, but choose to use SVCF as the means to distribute their philanthropy.
To Carson and others, these developments represent a natural progression for CFs in a society that is ever more global. &People increasingly see themselves as national citizens and, more likely, as global citizens,& he notes.& And because many Americans, or at least their parents, hail from different countries, they want to be able to send money overseas as well as to contribute to their new homelands. To compete in this arena&and also to counter the inroads made by financial services companies such as Vanguard and Fidelity, which are vying for donor-advised funds&the leading community foundations are carving out a niche in international philanthropy.
To some people in the CF world, venturing so far afield seems incompatible with the very notion of a community foundation. &A part of me says, &Shouldn&t it all be local?&& says the Mott&s Nick Deychakiwsky. But as someone with his own strong spiritual ties to Ukraine, Deychakiwsky concedes that &we&re all living in a more globalized world.& Ultimately, he hopes, globalization will lead to US-based CFs becoming more involved with community foundations abroad&relationships that could benefit organizations in both the developed and developing world. (And there are surprising similarities: Experts notes that CFs in emerging countries have a lot in common with those in rural areas of the US such as the deep South, where &hyperlocal& community development remains the sole focus.) &It&s amazing how much is transferable,& agrees Dedecker of the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo, who is exploring the sharing of best practices with a CF in Nottingham, England. &The universal drive is for significant change and a strong sense of place,& she concludes. &That&s what unites us all.&
Li Ka-Shing
By Sandra Salmans
Li describes his foundation as a "third son" and has pledged to donate a third of his assets to philanthropic projects in China and globally.
Li Ka Shing is known by many superlatives: the richest man in Asia (Forbes estimates assets of $31 billion), &superman& (for his business acumen), even (such is his celebrity) the only businessman to have a wax statue at Madame Tussauds in Hong Kong. But these days it is as a philanthropist that he truly stands out. Not only is Li, age 86, a leading donor (at least $1.65 billion from his foundation, to date, and more from his other sources), he is the outspoken exemplar of the kind of socially progressive giving which, although increasingly popular in the U.S., is rare in China, where wealth is traditionally kept within families and donors favor a low profile.
In fact, when he established his foundation in 1980, one of the three objectives he defined was to &nurture a culture of giving.& His two other goals are education reform and advances in medical research and services, and he&s made major contributions in both of those areas in Hong Kong (where he lives), China, the U.S., Singapore, and India, among other countries. In 1981 he founded Shantou University in Southeast China, with the intent of establishing it as a showplace for both higher educational reform and the life sciences, partly through a network of international partnerships and exchanges with some 20 colleges abroad. In the U.S., Stanford University&s medical school opened the Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge in 2010, and in 2012 the University of California, Berkeley, opened the Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences. Closer to home, Li has sought to inspire a culture of giving through a campaign called &Love HK Your Way!& which encourages grass-roots projects designed to bring people together and improve the community.
As his website attests, Li&s dedication to philanthropy is the result of a difficult youth. In an unusually soulful note, the site declares that &trials, hardship, and a sense of loneliness accompanied him on his journey from a small coastal village in China to the flourishing enterprise he oversees today.& Born near Shantou in mainland China, Li fled to Hong Kong with his family during the Japanese occupation, then was forced to leave school at the age of 15 for a job in a plastics factory after his father died of tuberculosis. As bootstrap stories go, Li&s is unparalleled: He became the factory&s general manager by the age of 19, and by the age of 22 had started his own plastic manufacturing business. His empire today, under the umbrella of the Cheung Kong Group and Hutchison Whampoa, includes immense holdings in real estate, shipping, telecommunications and biotechnology, and makes up 15 percent of the market capitalization of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Li, whose two sons manage his businesses, has described his foundation as his &third son& and has pledged to donate one-third of his assets to support philanthropic projects. &To be able to contribute to society and to help those in need to build a better life, that is the ultimate meaning in life,& he has said. &I would gladly consider this to be my life&s work.&
Lady Natasha Ri Isaacs & Lavinia Brennan
By Luke Norman
In a crusade to raise awareness of human trafficking, Lady Natasha and Lavinia Brennan found the power of the celebrity-crazed press to be their greatest weapon.
&We won a United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN-GIFT) award before we&d even sold our first dress!& That's a boast delivered with delightful innocence by Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs, co-founder of Beulah, a small London-based fashion label that continues to land outsized punches in its fight to combat the horrors of human trafficking.
Beulah&s story is more than a little infectious. Its journey&perhaps more fairly described as a sprint&from idea to global recognition epitomises a type of philanthropy impressive in its immediacy and impact. Beulah had yet to make its first sale when the company received a formal nod of approval from the United Nations in January of 2010. Despite the startup&s lack of employees and being run from a parent&s basement, Beulah was news.&
The label launched with the consciously one-dimensional public purpose of raising awareness of modern slavery. Largely thanks to the duo&s network, Beulah was able to almost instantly deliver their message through enviable&channels.
Quickly, with star customers from Sarah Jessica Parker to Kate Moss (via Pippa Middleton), famous bodies were snapped in its clothes. And alongside each mention of the shade of silk that Demi Moore sported was often a reference to the company itself. With the attention of febrile, fashion-obsessed teenage girls as well as seasoned Hollywood fashionistas, the outrage of human trafficking hit fertile, new minds.&The company boasts more than 600 pieces of individual coverage in publications like Vogue, Harpers, and Cosmopolitan. In kind, their butterfly-logoed brand has built a life of its own.
Surprisingly few people are aware of the prevalence of modern slavery. In 2010 the UN reported that human trafficking represents a $32 billion-a-year industry in more than 130 countries. Beulah&s founders were as ignorant as everyone else until a months long visit to the Atulya slum in Delhi, where they volunteered at an aftercare center for female victims of the sex trade. Appalled by the realities they&d never considered, the pair resolved to shed light on the widely&ignored practice.
&People seem to love the story behind the brand,& Rufus Isaacs says. The potency of their message has captured their clientele, and their own social circle, which includes both Prince William and Prince Harry, has similarly dazzled the tabloid press. With the added nuance of their shared Christian faith, the brand has been ripe for widespread publicity. Perhaps most importantly in the long run, Beulah&s product quality may be its quietest source of pride. This latter fact is a further credit to both women, both of whom share a lack of professional fashion experience.
&We&ve been very lucky,& Rufus Isaacs admits. The Beulah founders have cleverly leveraged the press attention that they hadn&t expected. When Kate Middleton chose to wear a Beulah design on her first official tour of South East Asia with Prince William, recognition of the label soared.
As is the case in much social entrepreneurship, Beulah has implicitly traded commercial viability for a tangible impact. (In the four years since its inception Beulah has yet to turn a profit.) And, for once, Britain's tabloid press is performing a public service.
The Philanthropist Voice Worldwide
By The Editors
Why quiet, modest or so-called “humble” philanthropy is
muting the potential for giving in countries across the globe.
Billions of dollars are being devoted to vital causes across the world in almost complete silence. Those making a difference with donations are usually successful and creative people of intelligence and compassion whose opinions deserve to be heard.
But quiet philanthropists rarely discuss the who, what or&most importantly&why of their giving. If asked privately, they talk of not wanting any attention, preferring a low profile or even being embarrassed by their wealth. Some suggest that talking about oneself and personal giving is not part of their culture.
But such unassuming generosity is being challenged by the causes they support as well as by their fellow philanthropists. Those who want to add decibels to donations have good reasons for urging philanthropists to speak out.
A big gift that&s well publicized can have double the impact of one that&s made covertly. The recipient gets a boost of confidence. Thought leaders and decision makers, from governments to nonprofits, sit up and pay more attention&and, perhaps, match funds&to previously overlooked issues.
And finally, where one leads, others follow. When a philanthropist endorses a cause with support on a large scale, others follow suit, and give big.
By going public, philanthropists bring others into the sunlight, helping generate a tradition and expectation of generous philanthropy amongst their peers. Those keen to see more and better giving largely reject donor concerns about negative perceptions or unwanted attention. Instead, they note that publicized gifts can encourage awareness, understanding and empathy&and, ultimately, commitment by others.
They point to philanthropists like Hong Kong&s James Chen, who contests the claim that Asian cultures are among those requiring the silent approach. Rather, he notes that the Chinese are among the world&s biggest enthusiasts for sharing their lives through social media.
Perhaps the best evidence comes from the experience of the United States, where between those who give prominently&from Rockefeller and Ford to Gates and Buffet&and the millions that make up &the crowd,& the philanthropic voice is strong.
In recent years, countries that have cultivated and supported the voice of their philanthropists have reaped the reward of a strong and expanding philanthropic culture. It&s no surprise so many are waiting for more donors to speak up.
Gilbert Brownstone
By Holly Howe
The Swiss-American art collector thumbed his nose at American foreign policy with his biggest gift yet.
Gilbert Brownstone likes to say that he has a &Cuban heart.& The American-born art collector holds the country in such high esteem that in 2010 he donated 120 artworks to the National Museum of Fine Art in Havana, all channeled through his namesake foundation established in 1999.&
The gift, which included works by major 20th-century artists like Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, and Joan Mir&, was a significant coup for the museum. Brownstone, who personally delivered the art, was awarded the Cuban Medal of Friendship for his support.
Brownstone, who is in his early 70s and arrived in France at the age of 17 and studied at the Sorbonne, is a Swiss national but constant traveler, dividing time between the United States, Paris, and Central and South America. He worked at a contemporary art museum in Paris, the Picasso Museum in Antibes and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and later opened his own gallery in Paris.
When that closed, he created The Brownstone Foundation in 1999 with the mission of supporting projects and establishing charities within the scope of &cultural and educational development.& Besides donations, of which the Cuban gift is one of its most spectacular, the foundation has loaned pieces of art to institutions around the world. The foundation&s beneficiaries include New York&s Museum of Modern Art and the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
Gilbert Brownstone standing next to an Alexander Calder piece.
Still, Brownstone has made the Caribbean island nation his special priority. In addition to gifts of art, he&s underwritten the creation of a 2,000-square-foot community center in the El Cotorro neighborhood of Havana (the project awaits final approval), as well as a new rehearsal space at the Havana Dance C he&s supplied musical instruments and initiated in 2002 and continues to fund the Noemi prize. Although the prize was originally intended to grant Cuban artists&dancers, musicians, and writers as much as visual artists&a three-month residency in Paris, in 2008 its scope was expanded to include artists from members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, a trade group which was founded by Cuba and Venezuela as an alternative to NAFTA and includes Latin American countries with socialist-leaning governments.
In fact, Brownstone&s philanthropy has carried a strong political message. When he donated art to Havana, he dedicated that gift to the so-called Five Heroes, Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States since 1998&for their alleged role in shooting down two planes piloted by an anti-Castro activist group two years earlier. In 2011, Rene Gonzalez became the first of the five to be&released and returned to Cuba after serving 13 years in an American prison. Two years later, a second prisoner was released and more recently, spurred by the&easing of the decades-old American trade embargo on the island, the final&three of the remaining Heroes were granted release in a prisoner exchange with the U.S. in December.&
Brownstone is also on the board of the Center for International Policy, a liberal group that works on issues such as U.S.-Mexican border policies, deforestation and, of course, re-establishing ties between the U.S. and Cuba. Even before the &rekindling of state relations between the two countries late in 2014, Brownstone was long&building his own bridge to Cuba.
Miuccia Prada
By Holly Howe
From the runway to her eponymous foundation, the designer brings her intellectual bent to everything she touches.
With a fortune estimated at roughly $11 billion, Miuccia Prada, 65, isn&t the world&s wealthiest philanthropist, but she is arguably the best dressed. Having inherited a&family haute couture manufacturer, which began in 1913 with a small leather goods store opened by her grandfather, she has grown the company into a fashion powerhouse, extending the Prada brand by expanding into men&s wear, less expensive women&s wear, shoes and fragrances, and opening some 250 Prada stores, according to Forbes. Along the way, Prada has become synonymous with understated, classic chic.
But Miuccia, who has a PhD in political science and is a onetime member of the Communist party&a so-called &aristocommunist& who demonstrated in Courreges rather than jeans&is not your average designer. With her husband Patrizio Bertelli, she has emerged as a modern-day Medici, taking a leading role in sponsoring and collecting avant-garde art. In 1993, the couple established PradaMilanoArte, opening a space in Milan for contemporary sculpture. Two years later they renamed their nonprofit Fondazione Prada and expanded its capacity to include more contemporary art, photography, film, design, and architecture. That same year they hired curator Germano Celant to work at the foundation. It was a provocative choice: Celant is famous for his ideological commitment to arte povera&literally &poor art,& revolutionary works that attack the corporate mentality through unconventional materials and style.
Fondazione Prada, Venice
Over the next couple of decades, the Fondazione Prada gallery in Milan hosted some two dozen exhibits by established and emerging artists, commissioned new video work, published over 30 books on art and architecture, funded film festivals and international touring exhibitions, and underwrote projects changing the traditional face of Milan, such as the permanent lighting installation by Dan Flavin at the church of Santa Maria Annunciata. It funded the Fondazione Prada Chair for Aesthetics at the University of Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, as well as philosophy conferences that underscore Prada&s intellectual bent. Not all Milanese have embraced her vision. &Culture is absolutely not seen as a priority,& she told The Art Newspaper in 2009. &We wanted to give a work by Charles Ray to the city of Milan, but ten years later they still haven&t found a square in which to put it.&
True to her interest in art and architecture, Prada hired Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to design her edgy stores. She also commissioned Koolhaas& firm to design the so-called Prada Transformer&a tetrahedron-shaped structure in Seoul that appears to shift shapes as cranes rotate the building&and a pop-up structure in Paris that served as museum, disco, and gallery space over the course of 24 hours. A more permanent home for art is Ca& Corner della Regina, an historic Venetian palazzo the foundation took over in 2011 to hold international art exhibitions.
"Synchro System" by Carsten H?ller"
In 2015 Fondazione Prada will host events during the Milan Expo, an undertaking dedicated to food safety, security, and quality that will promote Italy as well as global issues. That may be a good fit for the designer. In 2011 Miuccia Prada told WWD that she &probably& would seriously consider a career in politics. &Politics have always been a little of my passion,& she said. &And now I [could] use my work as a tool to do things other than fashion.&
Jorge Paulo Lemann
By Luke Norman
Brazil's richest man and international beer magnate, Lemann is plotting a steady philanthropic course helping his country's finest fulfill their potential.
He is Brazil's richest citizen, with a fortune estimated at upwards of $24 billion. He has been described by Bloomberg Business as "the world's most interesting billionaire." But perhaps the most impressive distinction to which Jorge Paulo Lemann can lay claim is that he has won the enduring confidence of no less a businessman than Warren Buffett. Lemann, says Buffett, is "a great professor" when it comes to learning about Brazil, and he has pronounced the 75-year-old Swiss-Brazilian mogul "classy."&
In 2013, Buffett joined Lemann in acquiring H.J. Heinz Company for a reported $27 billion. The purchase gave Lemann and his partners a controlling interest in what were three quintessentially American companies--Heinz, Burger King (now part of Canada's Tim Horton) and Anheuser-Busch.
Still, Lemann is virtually unknown in the U.S. Compare that with the flamboyant&Eike Batista, who only a couple of years ago--before he lost a fortune in natural resources--was offering Lemann competition for the title of the richest man in Brazil. The two men are also polar opposites when it comes to philanthropy.&
Look online for &Batista& and &philanthropy& and you&ll likely be bombarded with stories about wild, singular, and unfulfilled multimillion dollar donations&promised&to Madonna&s short-lived children&s charity or a high profile gift to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games bid campaign. Lemann&s 20-plus year education foundation &supporting young people with the potential to be leaders& is far less flashy or publicly lauded, but it&s consistent.
Lemann has long preached the importance of education and the necessity for Brazil to address its shortcomings in the area. He has often dismissed the country's inflation and national debt problems as &anytime& fixes compared with&the &long-term& and measured approach required of education reform.
For many established businessmen and women in Brazil, the memories of military dictatorship, rampant&inflation, and long crashes occasionally followed by short booms are still fresh wounds. Lemann&s response has been a sort of privately funded meritocracy. Students of all backgrounds, races, colors, and creeds have secured&Lemann scholarships. The only common denominator&is the quality of brainpower. Only those who have the potential to drive Brazil forward need apply. In return, they will receive some of the best education the world has to offer.&More than 10,000 students annually chase the&30 to 40 Lemann scholarships. Lemann also funds fellowships that allow students at Oxford, Columbia University and UCLA to study in Brazil.&
Lemann&s faith in education is almost exclusively thanks to his years at Harvard. The now ruthless businessman has regularly admitted that he only got into the exclusive university thanks to the strength of his backhand. Tennis and surfing were his central concerns when he arrived in the U.S.&Although he subsequently pursued a successful professional tennis career&Lemann was a five-time Brazilian national champion, played at Wimbledon, and represented both Brazil and Switzerland in the Davis Cup&Harvard changed everything.
Lemann was a five-time Brazilian national tennis champion before becoming Brazil&s richest man.
The impact was so significant that three&years ago, Lemann ended a speech to Fundacao Estudar, his own education foundation, by offering his help &to anyone, one way or another, who was accepted to Harvard.& An ambitious offer, even from the world&s 33rd richest man.
It wasn&t just rhetoric. Lemann currently supports a wealth of activities at his alma mater, including the Brazilian studies programme, the Brazilian office for David Rockefeller&s Centre for Latin American Studies, the Lemann Visiting Scholars Programme and the Lemann Fellows Programme at the Harvard School of Education and of Public Health, and at the John F Kennedy School of Government and the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
It&s not just Harvard he&s focused on. With a $16.5 million Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies, the University of Illinois benefitted from Lemann&s connection to its Professor of Economics, Werner Baer, also a respected South American scholar.&
Barring this type of occasional donation, Lemann&s largesse isn't huge. To date, Fundacao Estudar has supported around 500 students at the relatively reasonable cost of $9 million. With its narrow focus, it would be hard to argue that the program makes waves or has a huge societal impact. Lemann is equally tight-fisted in business, famous for paring costs and demanding more from his companies. &
There&s little indication that Lemann will suddenly become a career philanthropist and, despite his friendship with Buffett, it seems to be even unlikelier that he will sign the Giving Pledge. That's not his style. And that's okay with Buffett, who has called Lemann &[his] kind of partner.& No doubt Brazil&s brightest youth are saying the same thing.
Fred Mulder
By Lisa MacDonald
Founder, backer, and global ambassador of The Funding Network, Fred Mulder explains his commitment to social giving and crowd funding.
Frederick Mulder doesn&t understand why people aren&t more willing to be vocal about their charitable activities. For this Canadian-born art expert, the idea that giving should be done privately and without publicity has become antiquated. As a lifetime giver, Mulder is now putting his mouth where his money is.
As a young boy growing up in the Midwestern Canadian province of Saskatchewan, Fred Mulder was taught that tithing&the act of giving a portion of one&s income to the church&was normal and commendable. While education may have led him away from organized religion, his commitment to giving hasn&t wavered.
An early experience as a donor directed Mulder toward the benefits of collaborative giving. &I had a sense of being taken advantage of after a charity that I donated to went bankrupt,& he said. &They hadn&t told me that they were in any kind of financial difficulty and it occurred to me that it wouldn&t have happened if I had a peer group to check things out with...doing the kind of due diligence that you must do.&
That incident led the internationally recognized art dealer, who lives in London, to form two organizations that follow a crowd funding model: The Network for Social Change, the first giving circle of its kind in the UK, and The Funding Network, now a global organization he describes as &the friendly Dragons& Den&&a version of the popular reality show where visitors pitch their business ideas to a forum of investors&&for charities and potential donors.&
If Mulder&s approach to crowd funding has a calling card, it is its emphasis on live collaboration in place of online anonymity. &I don&t find it interesting or inspirational to give online,& he admits. &I love to hear from the people who are doing the work and meet them. I wish more people were setting up structures like mine, or one of their own imagining. There is still a ways to go.&
Although he supports many social causes, he stresses his primary attachment is to people. For Mulder, social giving is not only about leveraging money, it&s about creativity and entrepreneurship. &It&s like sitting on a teeter-totter,& he muses. &You need to put effort into finding a &heavy& to tip the balance on the other side.&
His artful approach is now a signature. After a Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior, was sunk in Auckland Harbor in 1985, he suggested using front-page advertising to attract new members. He took the risk of underwriting the campaign and was thrilled with its success. &It gave me a kick that an ordinary member of the public with &10,000 could take a risk on behalf of a charity, and that it worked out!& On another occasion, he became the news himself when he announced that most of the proceeds from his sale of Picasso&s 1935 etching, La Minotauromachie, would be donated to charity.
Mulder is in philanthropy for the long haul. In his role as global ambassador for The Funding Network, he continues to support the platform as it becomes more established around the world. Closer to home, he endowed his own Frederick Mulder Charitable Trust with &5 million in 2012 to be allocated to charities over the following 10 years. That his three children are trustees offers new challenges for the veteran philanthropist. &They&re quite tough on me actually&asking a lot of awkward questions. But it&s great. We are four busy people leading very different kinds of lives but linking over similar issues.&
Don & Mera Rubell
By Holly Howe
The Miami-based couple think of themselves as custodians with a grand purpose, sharing their 5,000-piece modern art collection with the world.
What to do when you have an art collection with over 5,000 pieces, including works by Keith Haring, Paul McCarthy and Jeff Koons? Share it with the world, according to Don and Mera Rubell, the Florida-based visual-art power couple. &You discover very quickly on this journey that you&re just the custodian of the important cultural artifacts of our time,& Mera once noted, in an interview with the Financial Times. &So how could you not make them available to the public?&
The Rubells never worked in the Don, 74, is a retired gynecologist and Mera, 71, is former president of sportswear company Ellesse. But when they started dating, after meeting in the library of Brooklyn College in 1962, they discovered a shared passion for art and together explored artists& studios and galleries in their free time. Initially there wasn&t much money to buy art&Don was in medical school and Mera worked as a teacher&but they allocated $25 a month from their $100-a-week income and set up the Rubell Family Collection shortly after they married in 1964. When Don&s brother, Studio 54 cofounder Steve Rubell, died in 1989, the Rubells inherited assets estimated to be worth $200 million. They sold those, freeing up cash to invest in hotel real estate and contemporary art.
Today, they have amassed what is widely regarded as one of the most important and edgiest private collections of contemporary art in the world. They are still collecting, an undertaking to which they devote about a quarter of their money. And, more than ever, it has become a family affair, particularly since their son Jason joined the board, and all three have to agree on a piece before they acquire it. (Their daughter Jennifer, an artist herself, opted out of the process to avoid any conflict of interest and to focus on her own career.)
In 1993, they took over a disused 45,000-square-foot facility in Miami where the Drug Enforcement Agency had housed confiscated goods, converted it into a 27-room museum and opened it to the public. The building displays some of their collection as well as their library of over 30,000 art tomes.
The Rubells see the museum as a way to educate people about contemporary art. &The major contribution of these private/public collections is it fills the gap for young people to see the art that&s being made today,& Don stated in an interview with the Art Economist. &I remember when our kids went to Duke and Harvard, and both of their art history courses ended with Andy Warhol... It&s a twenty-year lag. The young people never see what&s being produced that relates to their issues and passions.&
Staging exhibitions at most publicly-funded museums can be an arduous and time-consuming process, but the Rubell Family Collection has the agility to put a show together in a matter&of months, and can display new acquisitions quickly. They also regularly loan items from their collection to other museums, and even transport entire exhibitions from their own museum to other institutions, such as the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and Fundaci&n Banco Santander in Madrid.
But not everyone has welcomed the Rubells& gifts. In the early 1980s, Don wanted to set up an art bequest with his alma mater, Cornell University, but the school&s art museum declined the gift, citing lack of space. A few years later, when Cornell reconsidered the offer and went back to the Rubells, administrators discovered it was no longer on the table. A shame, as they missed out on works by the likes of Jean&Michel Basquiat and Cindy Sherman.
Princess Grace Foundation
By Bruce Makous
Originally created to salve Monaco's royal family's grief, the Princess Grace foundation celebrates three decades assisting emerging talent in theater, dance, and film.
She was the ultimate fairytale heroine, a radiantly beautiful commoner who&d caught the eye of and later married a prince. So when Princess Grace met an early death in a car crash in 1982, at the age of 52, it was fitting that her bereaved husband, Prince Rainier III, would create a foundation in her own country to foster and celebrate the arts.
The Princess Grace Foundation-USA focuses on the Princess&s primary philanthropic interests&discovering and assisting emerging artists in theatre, dance, and film. The foundation, a publicly supported not-for-profit headquartered in New York City, provides contributions to artists who are beginning their careers, primarily in the form of scholarships, fellowships and apprenticeships. To fund the foundation, the Prince mobilized Grace&s supporters, which included the likes of Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant. (The foundation is distinct from the Princess Grace of Monaco Foundation, which the princess created shortly after her marriage to encourage local artists and crafts people.)
Through its flagship program, the Princess Grace Awards, the Princess Grace Foundation-USA provides the financial assistance and moral encouragement needed by emerging artists so that they can focus on the creative process. Applicants must be nominated by nonprofit arts organizations, and a panel composed of distinguished professionals in theatre, dance, and film annually selects the winners on a competitive basis. Since the Foundation&s inception, more than 750 Princess Grace Awards totaling nearly $10 million have been given to performing artists. Many winners have subsequently achieved public recognition and critical acclaim, including Oscars, Tonys, Emmys, and other awards.
Among the notable winners are Robert Battle, the dancer and choreographer who now serves as Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance T Yareli Arizmendi, the Mexican actress who played Rosaura in Like Water for Chocolate; Bridget Carpenter, playwright and screenwriter nominated three times for Best Dramatic Series by the Writers Guild of America for her work on Friday Night Lights; and Stephen McDannell Hillenburg, the animator, writer, producer, actor and director best known for creating the SpongeBob SquarePants TV series.
Those Princess Grace Award-winners who subsequently distinguish themselves in theater, dance, or film receive an additional form of recognition&the Princess Grace Statue Award. To date, 54 artists have received this award. A third type of recognition, the Prince Rainier III Award, established in 2005 after the Prince&s death, is presented to eminent artists who have also made significant humanitarian contributions. This award, which includes a grant to the philanthropic organization of the honoree&s choice, has been given to such stars as Julie Andrews, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Twyla Tharp, Denzel and Pauletta Washington, George Lucas, and Glenn Close.
Her family is carrying on her philanthropic legacy. Prince Albert II is the vice chairman of the foundation, and Princess Caroline is president of AMADE Mondiale, the Monaco-based NGO that Grace founded during her lifetime to help children in the developing world. Recently, for example, AMADE has provided support to Syrian children in refugee camps and to families devastated by the typhoon in the Philippines.
In fairytales, the royal couple lives happily ever after. But even when death intervenes, it seems, they can make others& dreams come true.
Allan English
By Doug White
Allan English wants to microfinance a million people out of poverty by 2020. How's he doing?
You never know what a gift solicitation will lead to.
By the early 2000s, Allan English had achieved a good deal of success with Silver Chef, a firm he founded in 1985. Around that time, he responded to a request for $10,000 from Opportunity International. He&d had no history with the charity, but its work struck a chord with him. Specifically, he was asked to support a micro-finance center in East Timor.
The idea for Silver Chef came from a trade show in the United States. The American home delivery pizza market was booming, and English saw the market&s potential in Australia. Soon after he invested heavily in conveyor ovens, however, he discovered that many small pizza operations couldn&t afford to buy them. So he decided to rent them out and, pretty soon, when the pizza store owners began generating revenue, they began to buy the ovens. Ten years later, Allan devised a funding option that enabled small businesses to procure the equipment they needed without committing large amounts of capital up-front. It&s called and trademarked as Rent-Try-Buy.
As a moderately wealthy man and as an occasional donor, he was looking around for ways to do something significant. &The idea of owning big boats and big houses didn&t do it for me," he says. When English saw a request from Opportunity International and their outlined cause, he recruited as many friends as he could to the cause. &And away we went,& he says. Then, about a month later, &I was catching a glass of red and I received a report from Opportunity International that explained the impact we were making. The forecast was that 40,000 lives were going to be changed over the next five years because of the project we were supporting.&
And that&s when it happened: &It just hit me like a rock. Forty thousand people&that&s a football stadium full of people. And there was no ego attached to this. It was absolutely pure impact. Imagine doing that every year. Wouldn&t that be fun?&
He decided it would be. &Now I had a purpose to go back to work and create wealth. So I hired someone to take over my volunteering stuff and I went back to work.& After he returned, the company grew 600 percent over the following six years. And in 2005 the company went public on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Then he set up his own family foundation. Endowed with $20 million in Silver Chef shares, the foundation distributes about $1 million annually. Forty percent is earmarked for poverty-alleviation programs overseas. &We have a very audacious goal to fund one million people out of poverty by the year 2020. So far we&re at 200,000 and we&re on our way.& Another 40 percent is distributed in Southeast Queensland and the remaining 20 percent is in a social innovation fund for, as English puts it, &young people with vibrant ideas.& He senses that he&s &not in a sexy space" by his own admission: "I don&t go for puppy dogs and kids& charities&I tend to go for the things that are a bit tougher in our community, which probably sometimes get ignored.
&It&s my journey from success to significance," he adds. "From financial success in a business sense to having more significance in my life because of the work that we are doing.&
Her Royal Highness Princess Bandari Bint Abdulrahman Al Faisal
By Julie Shafer
The Princess has a clear definition of successful philanthropy and, in her view, being a woman in Saudi Arabia is a plus.
In a country where women aren&t allowed to drive, let alone vote, hold office, or do much of anything without a male guardian, what kind of role can a woman play in philanthropy? In Saudi Arabia, a significant one, in the admittedly exceptional case of Her Royal Highness Princess Bandari bint Abdulrahman Al Faisal. Princess Bandari has been the Director General of the King Khalid Foundation since its inception in 1999.
To a degree, she was groomed for the job. Her mother and grandmother were active role models of formal and informal philanthropy throughout her childhood. To ensure that she was not a &spoiled& child, they would have her accompany them on visits to nonprofits to listen to discussions on women&s rights, roles, and responsibilities within their community.
After graduating from Harvard&s John F. Kennedy School of Government with a master&s in public policy in 1998, Princess Bandari accepted the Directorship with some reluctance. She was apprehensive about her preparedness and qualifications for the role, but her gender wasn&t an obvious disqualifier. In fact, women in Saudi Arabia have frequently assumed The King Khalid Foundation leadership positions in foundations, nonprofits, and non-governmental organizations. (And, starting in 2015, they will be allowed to participate in the elective process.) If anything, the Princess says, her gender is a bonus&she&s allowed to be more aggressive and outgoing and &has nothing to lose.&
Although the Princess is traditional in many ways&for example, she has described the enveloping abaya as a relief because she doesn&t have to decide what to wear&in some respects she has been surprisingly bold. Last year, for example, she gave the go-ahead for a newspaper advertisement against domestic violence&a striking full-page picture of a woman with a black eye clearly visible under her burqa. Underneath the image a slogan read, &Some things can&t be covered,& and a list of phone numbers for local domestic abuse shelters. As the country's first-ever anti-domestic abuse advertisement, the campaign was as shocking as it was powerful, but Princess Bandari, who approved it, says she doesn&t understand the controversy. &My media and PR team were a bit nervous going into this, saying, &Are you sure you want to do this?& I didn&t understand why. I don&t understand what is so controversial. Who will say, &Yes, it&s okay for women to be beaten up&?&
During her tenure, Princess Bandari has worked to build formal structures within the foundation, institutionalizing measurements and evaluations. She was handed a blank canvas and admits that making mistakes fast became part of her learning process. The Princess describes her management style as &growing organically& and strives to keep up pressure on the foundation&s impact not only for her local community but for the entire country.
One of the most critical discoveries has been the overwhelming need for capacity building in Saudi Arabian nonprofits. Princess Bandari focuses first on sustainability, not dependency. The foundation assists with strategic planning, mentoring and program development. Bandari has coached philanthropists and other foundations in the realities on the ground, including the need for program-building funds to ensure a robust nonprofit system.
And, perhaps to ensure continuity, she has also established the Princess Bandari Al Faisal Fellowship at the Kennedy School to support students from the Arab League. Women applicants get preference.
Patrice Motsepe
By Cheryl Chapman
He signed The Giving Pledge with a commitment to raise millions out of poverty. Can he do it?
Born in Soweto in 1962, South African magnate Patrice Motsepe early on proved himself a business asset as a youngster helping out in his father&s small grocery store in a mining community. &My father used to say that the family made a lot more money when I worked behind the counter, which I was doing from the time I was about five years old,& Motsepe recounted in a recent interview. And because his parents gave away groceries to their poorer customers and even paid school fees for some of children, he was also exposed to Ubuntu&the African belief that one&s well-being and happiness depends on the wellbeing and happiness of others.
Those were formative experiences for Motsepe, who went on to earn a law degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and began practicing corporate law in 1994, the same year that Nelson Mandela was elected president. Benefitting from South Africa&s black economic empowerment laws which mandated that companies be at least 26 percent black-owned in order to gain a government mining license, Motsepe founded African Rainbow Minerals, the country&s first black-owned mining company, and grew it rapidly through a series of acquisitions. Today with a net worth estimated at $3 billion, he is South Africa&s richest man and its first Black billionaire.
Patrice's wife, Precious Motsepe.
Now Motsepe and his wife Precious, a physician, have set&their sights on an even more ambitious goal: lifting their continent out of poverty. Their foundation, established in 1999, seeks to &improve the lifestyles and living conditions of poor, disabled, unemployed, women, youth, workers, and marginalized South Africans, Africans and people around the world,& according to its website. It has funded structural projects and capacity-building in schools, faith-based organizations and traditional community, leadership, women and youth empowerment initiatives, health improvement initiatives, and a major program that encourages leadership through one of the country&s most popular pastimes: soccer. (Motsepe also owns the soccer club Mamelodi Sundowns.)
In 2012 he and his wife became the first Africans to sign the Giving Pledge. &The businesses that we started or participate in also became important instruments for job creation, education, health care, poverty alleviation, and wealth creation,& he wrote in their&Pledge letter. &We will continue to work with and encourage Governments on the African continent to implement fiscal, legislative, anti-corruption, and other measures to ensure that their economies are globally competitive and attractive to private sector and other business investments.&
Recently, Motsepe has doubled down on a commitment to help South Africans out of poverty with low-cost loans and development support for sustainable micro-enterprises. In 2013 he announced the creation of a local community investment fund to be used mainly to underwrite sustainable new business ventures in two rural areas of Cape Town. The $1.2 million donation was designated to be spent over a year-long period&"because sometimes you find amounts of money stuck in a bank are not used while people go hungry,& he said. The foundation also announced plans to spend about $50 million over the next few years across South Africa on education, women- and youth-owned businesses, and other initiatives.
Some critics have argued that Motsepe might exercise his philanthropy more even-handedly by raising wages for mine workers, who are notoriously badly paid. Motsepe, for his part, has argued that mining companies cannot afford to pay more and don&t get sufficient credit for their good work. Meanwhile, the increasingly public figure made headlines at the end of 2014 for a personal purchase of a $6 million luxury Cape Town retreat.&
Still, Motsepe believes that Africans can lift Africa out of poverty. &There is a new generation of Africans that have studied in different places, such as France, the US, the UK, and who have returned to the continent with a wealth of experience and knowledge,& he says. &I am excited when I meet these people across the continent and believe that they will provide the energy, passion and enthusiasm to drive Africa forward. The future of this continent is looking very promising in the hands of these dynamic entrepreneurs.&
The Russian Paradox
By Luke Norman and Nick Cater
Russian oligarchs not only face a moral responsibility to give back,
their evergreen President makes sure they’re doing their bit.
One collects Faberg& eggs, another acquires supermodels, and a few more invest in football and basketball teams. But whatever their avocations, Russia&s oligarchs have
their wealth is unimaginably vast and their ties to President Vladimir Putin are undeniably strong.
This situation has produced what could be called the Russian paradox. The advent of a free-market economy has led to an explosion in private wealth and according to&Forbes, Moscow is home to 84 billionaires worth a total of $360 billion&and with that an unprecedented boom in philanthropy. But, increasingly, under Putin&s guidance, the philanthropy of these new tycoons resembles nothing so much as an extension of the national government.
Viktor Vekselberg
The roll call of Russia&s philanthropists is, predictably, a Who&s Who of the country&s most affluent and successful: Alisher Usmanov (possibly the richest man in Russia), Roman Abramovich, Vladimir Potanin (who in 2013 became the first&and, so far, only&Russian billionaire to sign the Giving Pledge), Dmitri Zimin, Mikhail Prokhorov, Mikhail Fridman, and the husband-and-wife teams of Dmitri Zelenin and Alla Zelenina, and Viktor Vekselberg and Marina Dobrynina. (It was Vekselberg who spent more than $100 million in 2004 to triumphantly return the 194-piece Forbes Faberg& jewellery collection, including nine exquisite eggs, to Russia.)
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Noticeably absent from the list are two prominent critics of Putin: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formerly the richest Russian, now living in Europe, and the late Boris Berezovsky, both of whom could legitimately claim to be forefathers of modern Russian philanthropy.
The pattern is clear. If you garnered vast wealth thanks to the break-up of state-owned assets in the 1990s, then you owe, big time. Campaigning in 2012, Putin frequently noted that he was considering a special tax on entrepreneurs who had benefited from acquiring state assets at &unfair prices.& Whether he does this or not (it seems unlikely), he clearly remembers his debtors. And he has not been shy about collecting.
From dropping tycoons into the governorships of obscure, dilapidated regions to strong-arming cash donations for projects of international resonance, the former KGB chief maneuvers some of Russia&s private wealth to the places he sees fit. Subtly and not so subtly (Khodorkovsky, after all, served ten years in a Russian prison for fraud and tax evasion before being released in 2013), the once-and-seemingly forever President has made it clear that, in return for their continued economic and even personal freedom, Russia&s capitalists must pay.
By all accounts, they paid handsomely to fund last year&s Sochi Winter Olympic Games, reportedly the most expensive Olympics ever, with an estimated price tag of $50 billion. A major infrastructure program has been announced for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, and it&s certain that it will generate both lucrative contracts and donations from grateful businessmen.
Such donations add up. In 1998 individual giving in Russia amounted to a piddling $200,000. From
of Russia&s 15 richest gave away $1.3 billion, according to&Bloomberg Markets. It is an astonishing amount but there&s lots more where that came from: The combined wealth of the 10 stood at $127 billion, as of April 2013.
When compared to the West&s big donors, the figures appear a little less impressive. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, backed by Warren Buffett, gave away $6 billion of the trio&s combined $124 billion wealth in 2011 alone. However, Americans have had more time to perfect the nuanced art of modern philanthropy. What&s more, such lists fail to acknowledge the regional development underwritten by Russia&s oligarchs.
Roman Abramovich
For example, Roman Abramovich reportedly gave $310 million to charity in 2010-12, but that doesn&t include the $164 million that Evraz, a steelmaker Abramovich owns in part, spent on social projects in its operations area in the same period. Similarly, Mettalloinvest, which Usmanov controls, gave $260 million to local services and social programs in 2010-12, on top of $247 million in personal donations.
Public office is a favourite tool of Putin&s. Fridman, Abramovich, and Zelenin have all taken a turn in the last 15 years, and it isn&t cheap. Abramovich is reported to have given or invested $2.5 billion in local services and charitable initiatives in the remote Russian Far East region of Chukotka, where he was Governor for eight years. Chukotka seems to have benefited. From 2000, Abramovich&s first year in office, to 2006 average salaries rose in the region from $165/month to $826/month. Housing and healthcare also improved with Chukotka boasting the highest healthy birth rates in Russia during Abramovich&s tenure.
Putin tweaked the rules in 2005 to facilitate this kind of appointment and now has personal responsibility for the hiring and firing of the governors for all 83 regions. As a result, when Abramovich made noises that he&d had enough of the cold of Chukotka after one term, Putin insisted otherwise. Although Abramovich was finally allowed to resign in 2008, his gift keeps giving: In 2010-12 he gave $98 million to the Territoria and Pole of Hope foundations, which support humanitarian work in Chukotka. And even several years after Zelenin left the governorship of Tvor Oblast, his wife raised more than $300,000 per year for their &A Kind Start& charity.
This type of state-directed philanthropy has elements of the old Russia. For centuries under the czars, charity was linked to the church and the largesse of the more enlightened aristocracy. The 1800s saw the rise of individual philanthropists like Baron Horace Gunzburg, and wealthy families such as the Morozovs and Mamentovs, who supported orphanages, hospitals, museums, and the arts. The Bolsheviks halted giving when they took power in 1917, and for more than seven decades philanthropy was banned. Soviet control enforced donations to officially selected charities and required millions to &volunteer& their time.
But with&perestroika, new private enterprises were born, and they immediately began making donations to charity. By 1998, more than 75% of Russian companies were engaged in corporate philanthropy, although the giving was concentrated among the biggest companies. Even in 2004, more than half of Russian philanthropy came from just 20 corporations. Money went to fund the Olympic team, student exchanges and, under new accounting standards, certain business costs inherited from the Soviet era, such as staff housing. Lukoil, for example, made charitable contributions to train oil-industry recruits as well as to support young children, old soldiers and disaster victims, religious groups, and cultural endeavors.
Vladimir Potanin
Virtually all giving was by companies, rather than individuals, until 2000, when Potanin (who later invested in the Ford Modeling Agency in the US) launched Russia&s first private foundation. (Not until 2011 were individual charitable donations finally made tax deductible.) A year later Khodorkovsky established the Open Russia Foundation, with Lord Jacob Rothschild and Henry Kissinger among its trustees, and with the goal of fostering a democratic society with activist citizens demanding a functioning state, an accountable government, and transparent human rights.
Before he was arrested in 2003, Khodorkovsky observed that his country had squeezed the progress of generations of the Rockefellers and Morgans, from robber barons to philanthropists, into just five years. Khodorkovsky himself was an exemplar of such rapid progress. Once a Communist Youth League activist, he did well in commodities and banking in the early 1990s. Subsequently, he bought cheap privatization shares and in 1995 gained control of the state oil giant Yukos for $350 million, a fraction of its market value. It became the world&s fourth largest oil company, with a one-time net worth of $15.2 billion. Until prison cut short nearly all of his activities, Khodorkovsky was putting $200 million a year into Open Russia.
As Khodorkovsky&s dramatic trajectory suggests, sizable forward movement in Russian civil society is often followed by an equally sizeable retreat. In 2012, Putin demanded that all Russian institutions receiving financing from foreign sources be registered as &foreign agents,& a regulation that crippled many of the NGOs operating there, increasing the need for Russian philanthropists to step up to the plate. Now sanctions imposed by the West in response to conflict in Ukraine are starting to take their economic toll. How this will play out for Russia&s oligarchs and their newfound philanthropy remains to be seen.
Ambassadors for Philanthropy?
By Dame Stephanie Shirley
The British Government’s Founding Ambassador for Philanthropy revisits her appointment.
The call from the Cabinet Office came in March 2009. Would I be interested in being appointed as Britain&s first- ever Ambassador for Philanthropy? Many said, after the fact, that I was a logical choice: I was self-made and had given generously to autism research and technology and was at home talking about all aspects of giving. I weighed the offer for about five minutes, and promptly signed on.
In the end, the position turned out to be both more and less than I initially imagined. We had few victories in a push to truly unleash giving in Britain. A year is a very short time. But, while the ambassadorship expired with the Labour government in 2010, it led to a number of developments that continue to this day.
It wasn&t long after taking the honorary position that the penny dropped&l